Alamosa Presbyterian Church

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Alamosa Presbyterian Church
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Alamosa, CO 81101
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"In Praise of Thomas"
(Co-Presenters Pastors Harold (Tex) Russell and Cris Russell)

Prior Scripture Reading: John 20:24-29

A typical story, from an Eastern religion, has a holy man, sitting, on the top, of a mountain, with his eyes closed, meditating. A disciple climbs up the mountain, and asks the sage: "O Master, Who am I?"

Without opening his eyes, the holy man says: "Look down, from whence you came; look down the mountain, and tell me what you see."

The disciple responds, "I see a scrawny tree," growing out of the mountain-side. And what do you see, when you look at the tree? I see branches. And what do you see, upon the branches? I see leaves and blossoms. And what do you see, within the blossoms? Seeds. And what do you see, within the seeds? Oh, Master, I see NOTHING, within the seeds. And the Guru says, to the disciple, AHA! You ARE that NOTHINGNESS!"

The thrust of the story is to get beyond, the dimension of physicality. But Christianity doesn't work that way. It insists upon Incarnation. It accepts the body. It insists upon "physicality."

The Gospel of John has a set of Resurrection Appearances. There's, first, Mary, who sees the Lord, through her tears, then Peter, who like the disciple, in my story, just the physical stuff, lying around, then the "disciple whom Jesus loved," who believes because he is loved, and, finally, Thomas, for whom faith comes with difficulty; faith, for him, depends upon physical contact with the Lord. He has to see, for himself, the wounds from the nails, the wound on the side, of Jesus' flesh, because physicality counts, for Thomas.

Now, Thomas was not with the other disciples, When Jesus came. So, they TOLD him, "We have SEEN the Lord."

But Thomas said, to them, "Unless, I see, in His hands, The print of the nails, And place my finger, In the mark, of the nails, And place my hand, in His wounded side, I will NOT believe."

If you were one of those other disciples, what could you say? Is there anything you could say that would convince him?

The disciples could try and coax or cajol, they could try and persuade or argue, with Thomas. They can pity him, or get mad at him, but it's all useless. Nothing they can say makes any difference. Thomas has to have his own experience.

It's like the people who surround an alcoholic. They can sympathize or beg, reason with or plead, forever. Yet, if change is to come, it comes from the depth of that drunk: his cry for help, his choice to change, as well as his subsequent practice.

As Stephen Covey says, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: No one can persuade Another person to change. Each of us guards A gate of change, That can only be opened, from the inside. We cannot open the gate, of another, Either by argument, or emotional appeal."

Our view of Thomas is affected by his nickname. But it comes from convention because no one, in Scripture, ever calls him "doubting Thomas."

The first time that we meet Thomas in Scripture, he stands out, positively, from the other disciples. When they have fled from Judea, and are hiding out, Jesus proposes to return, and, it is Thomas who says, "Let us all go with Jesus, that we may all die with Him."

The next time that we hear of Thomas Jesus spoke of His leaving them, to go and prepare a place for them. And it is Thomas, who speaks up, and puts into words, what they are all thinking: "Lord, we do not know, where You are going; how can we, know the Way."

This passage, frequently used at funerals, is so familiar, that it tends to slide, in and out of the mind, without making much impression, and so, the paradox of what Jesus is saying, is missed. After Thomas, speaking for all disciples, says, "Lord, we don't at all know, where You are going; we cannot possibly know the Way," Jesus springs His "I am, the Way, the Truth, and the Life."

The paradox is that Jesus is, in the one sense, going "away" from them, and yet, by doing so, He is connecting them with a spiritual body, which is both themselves, and yet infinitely larger than they were: The journey that Jesus goes upon will dissolve egos, on earth, into a total self, in the Spiritual Kingdom. From the point of view of Thomas, there is "no where" left, in the world, where he can see his way clear, to go, so, it is as if he, and the other disciples, were caught up in an intolerable claustrophobia, from which there is no escape-- just like the "locked room" we find them, confined to, later-- but, Jesus simply bursts through all that, just as He walks right into their locked room, by talking of a Kingdom, where there are no egos, only a spiritual body, which is both our "selves," and infinitely beyond our "selves."

Well, Thomas is the guy, who, like most of us, still doesn't have the foggiest notion, of what Jesus is talking about. He is like the student, who is unself-conscious enough to ask the naive question everyone else wants to ask. He is the disciple, unembarrassed to ask the stupid question. He is the disciple, from our Easter religion, who, looking down the mountain, can see only the physical stuff-- who can perceive the particular seeds, but is lost when the Master speaks of "nothingness."

Most of us are more like Thomas than the others. Let us look for the positives, in his character. There is his courage. He is absent, when Jesus appears to the rest of the disciples, who are all holed up, in that locked room, which means that Thomas was the only one, among them, with the courage to leave the house.

Then again, when Thomas returns to the room, and the other disciples tell him, that Jesus has just appeared to them, it is Jesus, whom Thomas doubts, or is it all these cowardly or craven disciples?

Third, Thomas is our vital link to Jesus, at this point, because all later generations must believe without "seeing" the physical evidence, just like Thomas, who, right then, as he listens to the other disciples, has the choice between accepting or rejecting what they say to him. And it is the faith of these subsequent generations that is praised, by Jesus, when He says: "Blessed are they, Who find faith, Without seeing me."

Finally, we are linked to Thomas, because Jesus comes back, for the benefit of Thomas alone; this is what might be called the Biblical "one at a time" theme: He calls Mary, by name; He comes back, just for Thomas; He calls us, by name; comes back for us, one by one, until we say, with Thomas: "My Lord, and my God."

Jesus comes to Thomas, and to us, as the One who is willing, to reveal His wounds. It is His wounds that show who He is. The recognition scene, for Thomas, is the recognition of the Crucified Lord. When Thomas says, "My Lord and My God," he's making the crucial recognition, that the Risen Lord is He who has been crucified for us.

As His followers, we are those, who can perceive, the marks of pain, and hurt or death, wherever they recur. We are as those who are shocked, but not surprised, at the evil things that occur-- like those shootings, at Blacksburg, Virginia; and we are those who can see the campus at Virginia Tech, as still another landscape of the Cross, and participate in what they are going through, as a community involved in suffering.

As Jesus' followers, we become unafraid, as well, to reveal our own wounds. We know that our wounds disclose who we are.

We learn that it is THROUGH, disclosing the hurt-places, or heart-aches, or pains, that we draw more closely to one another as the Community of the Cross, as the disciples, of our Crucified Lord. We are "wounded healers," people who have the healing touch, to the extent that we can be open about our own hurts; and recognize the hurts of others, because we're living by the Light of the Resurrection: living by the radiance of Easter. AMEN.

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